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The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

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Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#81

Post by wslh »

Wow, I think the Empire Strikes Back is the best movie in the Star Wars saga. Darker. The movie was directed by Irvin Kershner instead of Lucas.

It would be great if someone puts an OCRed version of it to quickly search. I tried with ChatGPT but it "said" that is took many resources and need to cancel. Google Gemini couldn't do that and only suggest external resources to do that. Can someone try with Acrobat Reader or something similar?

Edit: OCRed via [1] and available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_CPDjo-TDzXZDOSIXPuhOcrv8lc...

[1] https://tools.pdf24.org/en/ocr-pdf

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#82

Post by JKCalhoun »

13of40 wrote: post #66
JKCalhoun wrote: post #19

Warning, a kind of fucked up story: I remember Sci-Fi conventions in the late 70's and there was this one character who was always around that gave off a hint of illegal activity. For example, he had plenty of 35mm trailers to sell at the convention that someone along the supply chain must have pinched from a local movie theater. But I remember he claimed to have a script of, as I recall, the not-yet-released sequel…

When I was in high school (early 90s) my friend's dad had an original script for Star Wars, and it looked basically like the linked one and what you described - a stack of xeroxed, typed, 8.5x11 pages stapled together. One thing that makes me think the one I saw was authentic was that Jabba the Hutt made an appearance when Han Solo and the gang were leaving Luke's home planet, except instead of being a space slug he…

That would be cool to scan and post if it still exists.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#84

Post by beebmam »

PotatoPancakes wrote: post #4

Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113): > Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and stronger than you in the use of the Force. You haven't a chance with me... any more than your father had. This draft was written before they came up with the idea that Vader could actually be Luke's father!

I love that the Star Wars Holiday Special was probably written before this, making it even more canon than what The Empire Strikes Back eventually became.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#85

Post by cocacola1 »

ggm wrote: post #83

I was given Alan Dean Foster's film tie-in book of a new hope before getting to see the film in 1976. Overall I think he did a fair job. Contrast with Orson Scott Card's novelisation of "the deep" which was frankly more Card's than the film.

Also interesting to note that Alan Dean Foster wrote Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which was written as a sort of backup plan for The Empire Strikes Back. If Star Wars flopped at the box office, Lucas would adapt Splinter into a low-budget sequel to Star Wars.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#86

Post by mmastrac »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #82
13of40 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in high school (early 90s) my friend's dad had an original script for Star Wars, and it looked basically like the linked one and what you described - a stack of xeroxed, typed, 8.5x11 pages stapled together. One thing that makes me think the one I saw was authentic was that Jabba the Hutt made an appearance when Han Solo and the gang were leaving Luke's home planet, except instead of being a space slug he…

That would be cool to scan and post if it still exists.

I think I have .txt files kicking around the NAS somewhere... I bet they are on archive.org as well.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#87

Post by MichaelDickens »

ethbr1 wrote: post #64
canjobear wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben Kenobi does pause in a pregnant way right before delivering the fateful line. In a way that almost looks like he's thinking about how to hide something. It works perfectly with the later revelation.

For reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hFB16GCocfw It's crazy that essentially the entire Star Wars canon is built on one piece of dialog by Alec Guinness. (Not just Anakin/Vader, but the Force and the events around Order 66)

The face he makes at 0:56 does look like the face of someone who's trying to come up with a lie.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#88

Post by ggm »

cocacola1 wrote: post #85
ggm wrote: post #83

I was given Alan Dean Foster's film tie-in book of a new hope before getting to see the film in 1976. Overall I think he did a fair job. Contrast with Orson Scott Card's novelisation of "the deep" which was frankly more Card's than the film.

Also interesting to note that Alan Dean Foster wrote Splinter of the Mind's Eye , which was written as a sort of backup plan for The Empire Strikes Back . If Star Wars flopped at the box office, Lucas would adapt Splinter into a low-budget sequel to Star Wars .

Awesome backup plan!

Lucas' decision not to use Alan Dean Foster for followons probably says more about Lucas than Foster. Once he realized he had a money printing machine on his hands, the last thing he needed was a name author with ego, and ideas about character development and story line.

That said, he got him back in 2002 and 2015. I guess by then Lucas could afford to be more affable about name writers and his universe.

Maybe it all came down to contract and authors rights? People say Alec Guinness negotiated a very good deal, they don't tend to say anyone else did.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#90

Post by MrVandemar »

ggm wrote: post #83

I was given Alan Dean Foster's film tie-in book of a new hope before getting to see the film in 1976. Overall I think he did a fair job. Contrast with Orson Scott Card's novelisation of "the deep" which was frankly more Card's than the film.

Do you mean "The Abyss" perhaps?
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